QueerCampus India only happened to start at Delhi. Totally by chance. It happened because a group of queer youth in Delhi(and this group is growing every day!) were willing to actively work towards building a queer youth/students' group that could act as a socializing space and also, as a means to provide informal support to queer youth and students who often feel isolated and misunderstood among their circle of friends and family, especially in the initial stages of realizing their sexuality.
But, at QCI, we are propelled by the idea of forming a collective for various fragmented queer youth support initiatives in India. And, we believe in evolving from the grassroots. And inevitably, for this we would need support from youth in other cities and even non-metro towns.
So, lets come together and paint the future pink!
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If you are interested in starting up with a QCI group in your own city, drop us an email at qcampus.india@gmail.com
Do mention your city.
What we plan to do at present is, bring together queer youth/students and interested community members from various cities and discuss the organisation of a QCI group in their respective cities.
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About QueerCampus India(QCI)
In Delhi, we have been holding biweekly public meetings for queer youth/students/community members on Saturdays. These are casual meetings with introduction and interactive session for the attendees. QCI also participated in the July 2nd, 2010 celebration in Delhi where we distributed pamphlets and talked about QCI to spread the word about what we are doing as a group.
QCI-Delhi in the media
Please note that we are not associated with any particular university/college. We are an informal group of youth/students who may belong to any university.
A little guide about how to have a QCI group in your city
This "guide" is only stated with respect to how we started up with QCI in Delhi. Of course, it varies depending on your city and people involved.
Basically, you don't need much to start up a QCI group..just an informal meeting-like we catch up with friends- with three notable things-
1) Meet regularly and preferably at afternoon-evening timings (eg. in Delhi we meet biweekly on saturdays, 3pm-6pm) to keep it within reach of 18-20 somethings living with their parents.
2) Popularize the meeting as an event at QCI's FB group and at our blog to keep adding 'new friends' to the circle.
3) Yes, community members at large are needed for support, but since we are evolving a group from the grassroots, we don't want to start as tie-ups with NGO's or anything of that sort. The group essentially needs queer youth/students, so do try to popularize QCI among this section of youth in your city.
Once we have around some three-four or more people willing to have such informal meetings, we'll make a QCI google group for your city which you can join and where you can decide time/place of the meeting among yourself. That's it! This group will keep growing and then you can plan more group activities apart from interactive meetings like watching movies, participating in pride events with QCI banner et al. All ideas for such activities can be planned/discussed in your city-specific google group. If you want to drop in your ideas for QCI, feel free to join the existing QCI google group listed in this post.
